Australian History - Aboriginal

We have enjoyed spending the past 3months learning about the early days of our country's history, and we are not finished yet! This time Sarah & Daniel are each using an A3 sized art journal to record information, and paste in pictures and photos taken on our excursions. We'll probably keep going with it for another 3 months before we take a break and move on to another unit study.

The children have been fascinated to discover that many suburb names in Sydney are actually aboriginal words, and at one stage they were busily checking maps and signposts to see if they could find others. A new development close by has even been named after Pemulway, so of course we visited and did some shopping there. My kids looked at the area with something like history-awakened eyes, and as we wandered around we discussed Pemulway's anger and hostility towards the white invaders, as he viewed them. His reaction was quite a contrast to other aborigines such as Bennelong who was more helpful and co-operative (well, after he got over being captured in the first place) I set Sarah to considering whether the whole event should be viewed as an invasion...or colonisation, but so much depends on which side of the fence you sit on, or your own worldview. At any rate, we had some interesting discussions.

This week we are joining one of our Homeschool groups for an excursion to an Aboriginal Cultural Centre where the children (about 30 or so) will be able to taste some bush tucker, do some aboriginal painting and decorate a boomerang, as well as try to make some good sounds come from a didgeridoo - well, the boys will be. The girls are not allowed to touch the didgeridoo....hmmm!